Totnes tech firm going for Gold in Tokyo

There are always huge technological leaps at every Olympics as the four year gaps allow advances in everything from team kit to TV coverage. 

In Tokyo 2020 (2021) it’s gone a step further, with the desire to interact with teams and individual athletes stronger than ever but no fans allowed to attend in person.  Organisers and teams have found a way around this and one nation is being assisted by Totnes-based Filmily. 

The AI-based video platform have been contracted to create content for the Canadian Olympic team. Co-founder, Andy Doyle spoke to the Tribe Tech Podcast: “Every fan can get a Fancard with their picture in it; it’s a still image for them to keep or share on social media. We’re also creating mosaic video walls overlaid and blended with the maple leaf.”

Fans can get on to the video wall if they record a message for their teams. They can also create messages of support for individual athletes, which gets put on a monument in the athlete’s hometown. 

Interaction with the games is not just about entertainment, according to Andy Doyle, it’s also about getting more younger people into sport and therefore healthier. This is certainly true, as team GB’s respectable 32 medals (at the time of writing) during this last week of the Olympics has, as always, spurred on young athletes; resulting in a spike of new members at sport grounds across the country. 

Andy said: “One of the big things data teams at sports clubs do is analyse the average age of attendance, memberships and ticket purchases. What we can help with is lower that age and encourage people to become members for longer.”

Digital interaction is becoming an extremely important way for football to interact with its 3.5 billion fans around the world. Manchester United, one the UK’s biggest clubs, boasts 350 million of those fans and the all-star Real Madrid claims 490 million. 

In addition Andy wonders: “How do you add value to those people who live in South America or India or Africa? They’re never going to spend a hundred pounds on a ticket, let alone fly to the UK to watch a game. So with us, it’s a really easy way for people in different economies, with lower incomes, or really remote places to get their own branded stuff and feel part of it.”

Now, with more and more clubs reverting to ticketless entries, Filmily also creates a sort of scrapbook feature for fans where they get a list of tickets for games they have attended, which they can download or share on social media; a nod to the biscuit tin filled with ticket stubs and another way to help people feel part of their favourite sport. 

“Sport is not just a one-way thing anymore, where the dad would buy four tickets, the family would go see a game. They’ll all have a pie and a beer and then they’ll go home; the only interaction was the purchase of four tickets from one person.”

There are a number of ways to interact with the games from afar this year. Google’s rolled out interactive games where players can compete in skateboarding, rugby and climbing. It’s super fun and looks like classic game console titles. 

If you want to take part in the Olympics fanzone and record a message for your athlete on the official Tokyo 2020 games site, click here.